.

             All of the Ripper"s victims were prostitutes. Mary Ann Nichols and Annie Chapman were killed about a week apart, and both had been severely mutilated. Elizabeth Stride and Katherine Eddowes were killed less than two hours apart on September 30th; an ordeal that would be dubbed a 'double event". Elizabeth Stride"s throat was cut deeply from left to right; as was the Ripper"s modus operandis, but her body had not been mutilated. Most suspect this was so because someone must have accidentally stumbled upon the murder and frightened the killer away. Unsatisfied due to an unfinished job, the Ripper walked three quarters of a mile and found Katherine Eddowes, another prostitute, whom he murdered and severely mutilated (he even removed her left kidney). The Ripper"s last victim was Mary Jane Kelly, the only victim found indoors, in her 'doss" in Miller"s Court. Her body was also the most severely mutilated; most likely due to the fact that the killer was able to spend hours in his grim task as opposed to only minutes on the other victims between police patrols (Wilson & Odell 59). .

             Dozens of theories on the Ripper"s identity have been formulated over the years and some have been weaker than others. The first such theory is that the killer was Thomas Cutbush. Cutbush was arrested in 1891 for stabbing two young women"s buttocks in public. He was proclaimed Jack the Ripper by the Sun in a "spectacular article" (Colby-Newton 68). This theory was quickly dismissed by Sir Melville Mcnaghten, Assistant Chief Constable at Scotland Yard and future head of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), who claimed that there were at least another three men, "any one of whom would have been more likely than Cutbush to have committed this series of murders" (Wilson & Odell 276). George Chapman was another popular suspect at the time. A Polish "barber-surgeon" (Crime 72) who immigrated to England sometime in 1888, Chapman was later convicted of poisoning at least 3 of his wives and hanged in 1903.